Slumber
by misa los domingos
Summary: Arrietty and Sho plunge into the depths of oblivion to forget their star-crossed love. Dark!fic. T for now. Arrietty/Sho, Arrietty/Spiller. Spoilers. REVIEW, REVIEW, REVIEW
1. Bleak

**Disclaimer: **  
Miyazaki owns the film. The book is by Mary Norton.

**Author's Note:**  
A little strange to write Arrietty so darkly. Seriously, though, it's a film with a lot of dark themes. It toys a lot with premature death.

* * *

**Bleak**

Arrietty marries Spiller. She does so to survive. Her father has gotten killed and her mother has gone insane. Two years before, she'd vowed to Sho that the Borrowers would keep on surviving. Just like any species, they have to survive. She and Spiller are of the same race, the same kind, the same roots. Their battles are the same, their loneliness equal.

But, they are not of the same heart.

When Spiller makes love to her, she enjoys the earthy, musky smell of him. When he returns from hunting to their little home- part Arrietty in furniture, tea and decoration and part Spiller in furs and weaponry- she is moved at his sincerity. He is fiercely loyal and very brave. He is rough all around, no doubt, but he is gentle with her.

But her heart. Her heart remains nourished by the sugarcube she's secretly saved, that has gotten harder as the years went by. Some nights, while Spiller sleeps or when he's gone, she'll go to her drawer and extract her secret sweet. She'll place her lips upon it, making sure not to break or disintegrate it. She's held her love for her Sho deep in her heart. She belongs to Sho. She can't forget his sacrifice, the way he risked his young life to save her and her family.

Is he alive? If so, could he grow tiny or can she grow big? So many physical hindrances to a perfect love. How can she let him go? How can she give up hope, not only that they become one, but that he may still be alive?

"I would have given you everything…" Tears spill down her face.

She grows wilder. She cares for her mother. She's learned healing techniques and knows to gather natural medicines. She's a huntress, a tiny wolfwoman, wife to a man of the earth. He gives her two beautiful children. She learns to listen to the stars, to sense the wind, to smell danger around every corner but stay unafraid.

Their children are still young when Spiller is killed. Her love for him was always organic, natural, healthy; his loss was sorrowing, deeply, painfully saddening. Her love for Sho is transcendental. Like a forest angel, a divine creature surviving on courage and disregarding any selfish fears beans thrive on, her love for her bean is otherworldly.

On damp, silvery summer nights, Arrietty lies on the poppies, the flower her love had given her. The flower produces a sleepy feeling, a pleasurable yet natural high. She can spin across the sky with the spirit of love. In her dreams and fantasies, she is with Sho. They are the same size. They are solid but spiritual.

Her muscles begin to ache. Her bones become brittle. The truth comes to her brain like a tick infestation under the kitchen: Borrowers don't live that long. Not as long as the beans. Not only do they get killed, like her late husband, but their bodily systems are so small that they do not sustain for longer than thirty years or so.

"I have to survive," she cries.

Finally, he comes.

Sho paces and paces the nighttime garden, warring with himself. He's almost as splendid as Arrietty remembers. He's older, less boyish. He's radiant with dignity, but nothing will compare with the first encounters Arrietty had with him: during that soft summer he stayed with his aunt Jessica, when he'd had to fight for his very heart. Arrietty watches him from her nest, convinced completely that she cannot go to Sho. She will not go.

She's too weary.

She lets him go to her, though.

When he finally finds her, he cries out then eventually calms down enough to kneel down and be eye-level with her.

"You're splendid," she tells him, "and you're alive."

"You're real," Sho marvels as he drinks in the sight of his Arrietty.

Arrietty can't exactly believe that.

"Where have you been, my friend?" she croaks. "How far you must have traveled."

Sho's brown eyes are sad.

"I tried convincing myself you weren't real," he says. "I thought I'd just made you up in my head. You know, I was so scared that summer."

"And now?" Arrietty inquires.

"I'm terrified."

Arrietty doesn't know what to say. Sho is still staring at her as if waiting for her to disappear. She wishes she could.

"That must sound terrible of me, doesn't it?" says Sho.

Arrietty shakes her head.

"I am alive, you're right," the boy continues. "I just seem to forget it, because this world I live in... I'm just..." He pours his heart out to the tiny girl: "Arrietty, I secretly wish I were dead. You're the only thing that ever mattered to me, the only thing that gave me hope. My parents dropped me at my aunt's when I was dying, because they were divorcing and they were too busy for me." Tears are spilling. "That's the world I returned to once I had my heart operation. It makes me want to wish that I'd never even made it through the surgery. That I could just have died then, the day after our goodbye, so I would have died happily. No... please don't turn away. Please. You taught me to struggle for a life that's worth living: you fought for your family who loved you. I struggled to return to a family who scorned me. You know, they weren't even there for my operation. Just aunt Jessica. I've convinced myself you were just a figment of childish imagination. Because hope has always seemed just out of my reach. I don't even know how to be grateful, because staying alive means nothing anymore."

Sho falls to the grass, to his knees. His head is in his hands.

"I don't know how to love anyone. I'm so sad and so lonely. I can't get away from it. I just want... I just wanted to see you, just like you are now." Arrietty watches Sho's beautiful eyes turn red as they stream tears. He looks so broken. "I can't believe you're alive. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm pouring this out, without any regard for you. I can't do anything right. I'm sorry, Arrietty."

The dams within Arrietty break and she weeps too.

"Oh, no," breathes Sho, gazing at little Arrietty standing on a leaf. He tentatively raises up a finger to her, as if wishing he could pick her up or dry her tears or hold her. Or something.

"No, I need to sleep," Arrietty confesses. "I'm the sick one, now years later. Isn't that ironic?"

"I'm sorry," says Sho.

"No," insists Arrietty. She notices that Sho is oddly beautiful in his misery.

As if reading her mind, Sho tells her, "you're as wonderful as I remember you."

Arrietty nods.

"Please, rest," continues Sho. "I'm sorry for upsetting you. I hope you feel much better soon. Is there anything I can do to help you now?"

Arrietty shakes her head.

"Can I come back to see you tomorrow?"

Arrietty accepts.

The next night, a warm and starry one, Sho tells her that he thought about her the entire day. He wants her to feel better.

"I didn't sleep last night," Arrietty confesses.

"How can I help you?"

Arrietty's words are cold: "We're from different worlds. You survived. I can't survive. Everything dear to me has been lost. I've even lost a child. I'm dying, Sho. Borrowers don't live as long as human beans."

"Let me help you stay alive," he says in that soft voice.

"I thought you wanted to die," Arrietty says.

"Not if I can protect you."

Arrietty remembers how Spiller used to protect her.

"There are ways to protect me, but they come at a great price for you. Beans and Borrowers were never meant to love."

Something sparkles in Sho's eyes at the word love, as though he's discovered something.

"What are the ways?"

Arrietty thinks of her children.

"I can't... I can't tell you, Sho. It would just hurt us in the end."

"No, please. I just... I just want to be with you, Arrietty."

_Be with me._

"It wouldn't be for very long, but we'd be together. We'd be equal. Then I'd be gone and your world would be in ruins, that you'd have to build up again."

Sho's excitement worries Arrietty. He shouldn't be so excited. He should run away, depression trailing behind and go find faith in love.

"Don't let me ruin you," Arrietty pleads.

"Would it ruin you?" Sho asks.

Arrietty can't answer. What she has in mind would leave her children to their own devices, but they hate and scorn her anyway for having been so emotionally neglectful. All she could ever think about since she met him was Sho. Now, at the end of her mixed-up life she could be with Sho the man she always loved. It would probably lead her straight to death, but it could also lead her to lend her children the explanation they deserved, an explanation she never had the stomach to offer before.

Ruin?

"I know what you'll say if I say no," Arrietty says.

"I'd say I'm all for it." Sho grins weakly.

The pull is too strong for Arrietty and she tries one more time, because she doesn't think of sleeping on the idea, no, it must be decided now just like everything else in a Borrower's life:

"Sho, you have so much more to live for than me, believe me. Your parents aren't everything. They do love you, they must. If they don't, someone else can, with all his or her heart. You don't have to plunge with me."

_I don't have the strength to lie to you and say I don't want you to. I want you to die here with me._

"Tell me, though, what there is to plunge into..."

Sho's interest reflects his carelessness for his own life. Arrietty begins to cry. She doesn't see that maybe he just has second thoughts, that's all. That's why he's asking. She doesn't realize anything anymore, so weighed down with depression and hopelessness is she.

Incidentally, this pushes Sho to the destructive part of his wounded mind. The reckless part.

"Please don't cry. Arrietty. Please: I don't care what it is you're asking me to do, but I'll do it. I just want to make you happy. It will make us happy. Who's to say it won't fix me too? I have nothing to lose but you and I don't know how to convince you otherwise, but it doesn't matter because I will try and keep convincing you. I want to make you happy, no matter the expense, no matter how you predict it will ruin my life. I'll ruin it. How can I make you understand? I've come to a decision and I can't turn back, and it's sad but it's my prerogative. It's the only will I have left in me."

Arrietty sighs deeply, sobs once and tells him what's possible.

* * *

**to be continued in ch. ii**


	2. Hope

**Disclaimer: **  
Miyazaki owns the film. The book is by Mary Norton.

**Author's Note:**  
A little strange to write Arrietty so darkly. Seriously, though, it's a film with a lot of dark themes. It toys a lot with premature death.

* * *

**Hope**

"Chew poppies," she explains. "They have magical qualities that place the mind in a vulnerable state. Once there, I'll tell you what to do."

Sho stares, and for an instant he looks hesitant. Good. He may back out. No. No, his resolve returns. Arrietty's not sure if she's relieved or repulsed.

"Where?" Sho looks around.

"Take me in your hand," says Arrietty. At the feel of his skin, she swoons. She says goodbye to her children.

She leads Sho to the moonlit field of poppies. There, he begins to nibble on them, looking wide-eyed and childlike at his little love, expectantly. Soon, he's devouring them. Arrietty tells him to wait. She warns he'll feel a slow wave of pleasure, to not be frightened. She's become excited without wanting.

Sho's emotional eyes go lidded. He smiles pliantly.

"There," Arrietty whispers. "Now, close your eyes."

They shut. Arrietty instructs him on what to chant. He must invoke the Spirit of Nature. Must feel the earth beneath him, inhale the dewy night air, and plead with Creator to grant him a wish.

"You'll know when the spirits grant you access to He who is All. Don't be afraid and be sure to wish from your heart."

Sho is plunged into dark sticky substance, eons of dirt and seeds and dead things that all saw sunlight at one time in that very same spot in his aunt Jessica's backyard some time or another. He can't breathe, can't see and can't scream. The scummy dead stuff has gotten in his mouth, spills into his belly, pressed into him and all he can do is withstand. Then, he is quickly purged, he still can't breathe, but he can see that he's suspended in mid-air. He's knocked around by hurtling particles that feel more like stars but are really air molecules - he's become that tiny. That tiny. He screams, "Arrietty!" and feels burning light in his lungs that begins expanding out his mouth and suddenly, spinning, he becomes larger than life and inhales cloud-air, for he's grown huge and the trees look like grass and he's so terrified he'll lose consciousness but he can hear Arrietty saying, "don't be afraid."

Tokyo is beautiful at night, but he can't help looking up, up at the galaxy. His strong new heart beats a drum and he knows he's close to the One.

"I'm going to fly up, Arrietty!" he calls down.

But he's already ascended to the sky, past planets and galaxies and entered Life and there he stands before Truth and pleads his case: I wish for Arrietty to be human like me.

Why, child?

Sho weeps at how beautiful the voice is.

"I want her to be happy."

You want to be happy. Remember that.

Then all is dark.

* * *

**to be continued in ch. iii**


End file.
